“You don't have to look like this, you’re very beautiful, you don’t have to wear the blonde wigs, you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?” asked Barbara Walters of living legend Dolly Parton in the classic insult-compliment-question format in a resurfaced 1977 interview.Parton, wearing a giant blonde wig with a turquoise flower to match her bright turquoise jumpsuit, did not take the bait. “It’s certainly a choice,” said Parton. “I don’t like to be like everybody else.” She followed up with some words to live by: “I would never stoop so low to be fashionable, that’s the easiest thing in the world to do.” Walters continued her similar line of questioning: “Do you feel like you're a joke, that people make fun of you?”“Oh, I know they make fun of me, but all these years, the people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually on them,” said Parton. “I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I’m sure of my love for life and that sort of thing. I am very content, I like the kind of person that I am. So, I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with makeup and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself.” You can watch the full interview here. Twitter resurfaced the interview clip last week and it got nearly 2 million views, further proof Parton was ahead of her time in the interview. Some are using an old country phrase to comment on Walters' line of questioning: “Bless your heart.”

“You don't have to look like this, you’re very beautiful, you don’t have to wear the blonde wigs, you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?” asked Barbara Walters of living legend Dolly Parton in the classic insult-compliment-question format in a resurfaced 1977 interview.

Parton, wearing a giant blonde wig with a turquoise flower to match her bright turquoise jumpsuit, did not take the bait. “It’s certainly a choice,” said Parton. “I don’t like to be like everybody else.” She followed up with some words to live by: “I would never stoop so low to be fashionable, that’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

Walters continued her similar line of questioning: “Do you feel like you're a joke, that people make fun of you?”

“Oh, I know they make fun of me, but all these years, the people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually on them,” said Parton. “I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I’m sure of my love for life and that sort of thing. I am very content, I like the kind of person that I am. So, I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with makeup and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself.”